Subtitling Special: Digital Nirvana

Interview with Hiren Hindocha, President and CEO, Digital Nirvana

Tell us about the path you have followed as a company since its beginning till now.

Founded in 1996, Digital Nirvana started as a provider of services, such as media monitoring and analysis; business market intelligence and analytics; and learning management services (test scoring and corrections). The company’s first financial services product was introduced in 2001. Its media monitoring software for broadcast and media/entertainment companies was launched in 2009, and cloud-based closed captioning services were introduced in 2016.

Digital Nirvana has always introduced new products after extensive research with current and potential customers into what causes their specific and industry-wide challenges. This is an ongoing process that continues throughout the life cycle of the solution.

At IBC, you’ve focused on your novelties in the field of captioning. Do you consider this industry to boom?

Yes. The reason for that is because so much content has found a home on streaming services. If you look at Amazon, Netflix, youtube, Hulu, Vimeo and the like, they source content from around the world. To reach a global audience, you need caption services. Thanks to closed captioning, there are many good programs available regardless of the language you speak. For example, I like to watch Korean movies and an Israeli TV show. My wife watches Icelandic TV shows. Captioning opens avenues for content providers to reach a global audience.

It also creates a much larger audience through online viewing. In environments where users on laptops and mobile devices don’t want to or can’t turn on their volume, closed captioning allows them to watch a sound-free show and increases the providers’ audience.

Another factor driving the use of closed captioning is the creation of metadata. Closed captioning increases the searchability of an asset. For content owners, it increases the visibility of their video, and for users they’re able to locate the content they want much easier. Some people use subtitles and closed captioning as a medium to learn a new language. In general, it contributes to a more user-friendly experience.